Radar Detection Performance Model For Low RCS Maritime Targets

Threat maritime surveillance radars provide an all-weather, day/night performance capability to detect and track US ships, and hence can adversely affect the Navy's Littoral Warfare capability. To help mitigate this threat, it is desirable to design US vessels with reduced radar cross-section (RCS) to minimize their signature. However, current maritime surveillance radar models are not accurate enough to quantitatively assess the tradeoffs between the complexity and cost associated with reducing ship free-space RCS and its associated measure of effectiveness, i.e., its benefit in terms of reducing ship detectability by threat radars. Dynamics Technology, Inc. (DTI) will develop a high fidelity radar performance simulation that accurately predicts detectability of small RCS ships and craft on the ocean surface. In Phase I, we will define the requirements and design of the simulation, adapt DTI's existing methodology within our validated Periscope Detection Radar Model to the low RCS surface target domain, and build a prototype performance simulation to elicit feedback and guide Phase II simulation development.